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Unknown Legends of Rock 'n' Roll
(Book). For every Beatles or Stones, there are dozens of visionary rock groups who remain unsung heroes. From cult figures such as Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett (the most famous musician included here) to virtually undiscovered artists, this behind-the-scenes book with a fascinating link to online audio of 12 rare songs celebrates the best rockers in everything from '50s rockabilly to '90s post-punk - the unknown greats who, for one reason or another, just never made it. Features lots of photos throughout.
- GenresMusicNonfictionHistory
422 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1998
14 people are currently reading
341 people want to read
About the author
Richie Unterberger
29 books45 followersRichie Unterberger's book "The Unreleased Beatles: Music and Film" details the incredible wealth of music the Beatles recorded that they did not release, as well as musical footage of the group that hasn't been made commercially available. His other books include "Unknown Legends of Rock'n'Roll," the two-volume 1960s folk-rock history "Turn! Turn! Turn!"/"Eight Miles High," and "The Rough Guide to Shopping with a Conscience." He's also a frequent contributor to the All Music Guide and MOJO magazine, and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area."
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
June 14, 2008
There's not too much in Unterberger's book that isn't already at least semi-familiar to huge music geeks like me, but even for the initiated, there's a lot of really good stuff in here, and his passion comes through in every chapter.
September 9, 2010
One fine autumn day in 1998 I was at Quimby’s book store, located in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood, when I noticed a book called Unknown Legends of Rock n Roll: Psychedelic Unknowns, Mad Geniuses, Punk Pioneers, Lo-Fi Mavericks & More. For the previous few days I had been deeply submerged in the making of a 90 minute mixed-tape of Psychedelic Pop songs (that I imaginatively titled Flowers and Fudgecicles) for a friend that I worked with, so the subtitle of Unknown Legends caught my eye. After all, I didn’t want to leave out any gems on Fudgecicles. So I thumbed through the book, gleaning that the author was some dude born in 1962 named Richie Unterberger (What kind of grown man goes by the name Richie? How about Rick or Rich or Richard or even Dick?). I turned to the back cover of the book—because I always like to take a look at the author to help me determine if I really want to read what this asshat has to say—but Richie’s photo was no where to be found. Nonetheless, I was eventually convinced to fork over 19 big ones for Unknown Legends because it came with a CD that included 12 “rare songs”. I took the book home and devoured it, it was written in a very easy to read manner and the subject matter fascinated me. I even put the CD in and listened to it as I read. Overall it was a pleasant reading experience.
A few years later, the internet was ballooning into the monstrocity of information and distraction that it has currently evolved to. I had become deeply involved in illegal downloading music by that time and I found the perfect quick reference guide for my undertakings on a website not-so-imaginatively called allmusic.com. And lo and behold but whose name do I come across? Richie Unterberger. He was a leading contributor to the website. Reading some of his contributions to the site I once again became curious as to what this guy looked like. But again his photo was nowhere to be found. Often when I read a book or an article by someone my mind will sketch in traits about this person, some of it is based on what I actually know about the author, some of it is based on how the author writes, what directions they go in, but some of it just based on what the author’s mugshot looks like. I had no mugshot for Unterberger, so my mind went ahead and sketched in a composite image and came up with this sorta laid back dude, the kind who wore t-shirts and jeans an who owned a vintage vinyl store in some historic urban neighborhood and who seemed to have all kinds of wisdom and endless stories of his experiences hanging out with the various Unknown Legends of Rock. This would be a cool guy to hang out with, I concluded. But at the same time there was underlying quality about Unterberger’s writing that sort of got on my nerves.
I didn’t realize what it was about Unterberger that rubbed me the wrong way until one day in 2009 when I was browsing the biography section of my local library and I came across The Rough Guide To Jimi Hendrix by, yes you guessed it, Richie Unterberger. Ofcourse the first thing I do is check the back cover to finally get an image of this Unterberger guy. And what I see is a toad. A middle-aged toad with a hair do (or should I say hair don’t) reminiscent of Larry from the Three Stooges, plus he has oversized horse teeth, Mick Jagger lips, a unibrow and the general overall appearance of walking, breathing douche-hat. I immediately realized that I had given this guy way too much credit. I could only wonder now why the hell had I assumed that Unterberger actually knew any of these Rock icons that he had written about? Why had I thought that he was part of their posse, that he hung out with them, swapped groupies with them, pulled bong hits with them, etc. I mean this guy was in the second grade when Hendrix died, yet he wrote about Hendrix with such an air of authority that you would have sworn he had been side-by-side with Hendrix as Hendrix went through life setting his guitar on fire and doing lines of coke off of teenage girls buttocks. Unterberger wrote things like “…for all his shyness, Hendrix also had a burning, competitive ambition”. How the hell does Unterberger know this? Maybe if he would have given concrete examples of this, or maybe if he would have cited sources who were actually close to Hendrix or at least knew Hendrix, THEN that kind of statement might have had some authority to it. Instead Unterberger comes off as trying to pretend to have been a close confidant of Hendrix. And that really irked me. Why was Unterberger talking about Hendrix as though he is at a family gathering talking about a wild uncle who shows up late.
As I read on, I found an assortment of these kinds of assumptions/opinions. For instance later in the book Unterberger is talking about how Hendrix caused tension in the recording studio: “Hendrix always had a hard time saying no to or getting rid of people who wanted to get to know him better, get high with him or generally feed off his aura, whether due to his innate shyness or an inability to assert himself.” Then a few sentences later Unterbeger writes “…at times the Experience felt cluttered and hemmed in when too many of these musicians showed up, or their additions were superfluous or led to unproductive jams which were a distraction from the songs they were working on”. Again, how does Unterberger know any of this? He doesn’t include any quotes, he doesn’t give any detailed examples. He wasn’t there but he is making these assumptions—assumptions that are directly wired into the accepted, mainstream, iconic caricature of Hendrix. Unterberger is judging Hendrix’s methods based on the trappings of old school Rockism standards. And this was really what was starting to bother me about Unterberger.
Unterberger’s allegiance to old school Rocksim is revealed in this passage as well: “Unfortunately [emphesis added], the jam with which listeners are most likely to be familiar with is one in which a drunken Jim Morrison was inspired to slur along with Jimi, as the results found their way onto releases of dubious legality, the most notorious of which was titled Woke Up This Morning and Found Myself Dead”. Why is this unfortunate? Why is it BAD for a couple of guys to get together, get drunk, stoned and make some music? Why shouldn’t Rock fans listen to that? Documents like that are an important part of Rock history. Whether the creepy political correctness cops think such endevours should be censored from Rock history or not—it is jams like that which are a part of the reality of Rock, much more so than the public relations image that the record companies, corporate magazines and mainstream media have concocted and construed for marketing purposes. And that Unterberger bought into this entire bullshit and then regurgitated it back was making it very difficult for me to continue to read his words.
So I was about to scrap the book when I took one more look at his photo again, and this time I realized that Unterberger looked exactly like a middle-aged version of Bill Steele. Who the hell is Bill Steele, you ask? Bill Steele, who I dubbed Norml Bill was a toad I met while I was a DJ at the college radio station at Western Illinois University in the late 1980s. He came into the station one day to record a “public service announcement” about a rally on campus that was being sponsored by NORML (the National Organization for the Reformation of Marijuana Laws). Normal Bill was excessively sweaty and pimply-faced. His head was shaped like a huge lumpy potato, his ears were like two little lumpty potatoes and in fact his entire body was like one big lumpy potato. He talked non-stop in this high-pitched excitable voice, sorta like Gilbert Godfrey and he wore ginormous Harry Carey glasses that he was continually pushing up to keep them from falling off his nose. I think I was actually stoned when we first met and on first meeting I found his entire being to be comic genius. I was probably smiling the entire time he gave his spiell. Living vicarious through those who smoke weed. He himself was not “cool” so he would latch onto those who were—or who he perceived were cool. Unterberger seemed to be of this same ilk. He seemed to be trying to be cool vicariously through the Rock icons he worshipped.
The bad rap against Rockism has been that it is a stunted way of looking at music (life? the world? etc.) Unterberger is clearly a product of that outlook.
As I seriously considered dumping his book and going on to something else (Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee—my Bible of sorts—was sitting on the end table next to my bed, as always: I could always read that) I decided instead to actually read the “About the author” blurb next to his mugshot on the back cover. Unterberger had written another book that I had read a year earlier called Turn! Turn! Turn!/Eight Miles High. At the time I had actually enjoyed reading that, it was actually a lot like Unknown Legend of Rock n Roll in that was on a very fascinating subject to met—a two part history of 1960’s folk rock. In the end I decided that I would continue to read The Rough Guide, for I concluded that Unterberger doesn’t have the hipster-wannabee pretentiousness of a lot of Rockist writers. He’s more in the old school of Rockism that simply worships the Rock Gods and accepts the established old school Rockist perception of life, love and rock music. And he’s entitled to his opinion, afterall obviously he had read tons about Rock, and collected thousands of dollars worth of recorded music and he’s certainly set back and listened to the music and formed relationships with the music and the rock artists in that manner. And he obviously loves Rock.
For these reasons I give Unknown Legends 2.5 Wagemann Heads
NEXT!
A few years later, the internet was ballooning into the monstrocity of information and distraction that it has currently evolved to. I had become deeply involved in illegal downloading music by that time and I found the perfect quick reference guide for my undertakings on a website not-so-imaginatively called allmusic.com. And lo and behold but whose name do I come across? Richie Unterberger. He was a leading contributor to the website. Reading some of his contributions to the site I once again became curious as to what this guy looked like. But again his photo was nowhere to be found. Often when I read a book or an article by someone my mind will sketch in traits about this person, some of it is based on what I actually know about the author, some of it is based on how the author writes, what directions they go in, but some of it just based on what the author’s mugshot looks like. I had no mugshot for Unterberger, so my mind went ahead and sketched in a composite image and came up with this sorta laid back dude, the kind who wore t-shirts and jeans an who owned a vintage vinyl store in some historic urban neighborhood and who seemed to have all kinds of wisdom and endless stories of his experiences hanging out with the various Unknown Legends of Rock. This would be a cool guy to hang out with, I concluded. But at the same time there was underlying quality about Unterberger’s writing that sort of got on my nerves.
I didn’t realize what it was about Unterberger that rubbed me the wrong way until one day in 2009 when I was browsing the biography section of my local library and I came across The Rough Guide To Jimi Hendrix by, yes you guessed it, Richie Unterberger. Ofcourse the first thing I do is check the back cover to finally get an image of this Unterberger guy. And what I see is a toad. A middle-aged toad with a hair do (or should I say hair don’t) reminiscent of Larry from the Three Stooges, plus he has oversized horse teeth, Mick Jagger lips, a unibrow and the general overall appearance of walking, breathing douche-hat. I immediately realized that I had given this guy way too much credit. I could only wonder now why the hell had I assumed that Unterberger actually knew any of these Rock icons that he had written about? Why had I thought that he was part of their posse, that he hung out with them, swapped groupies with them, pulled bong hits with them, etc. I mean this guy was in the second grade when Hendrix died, yet he wrote about Hendrix with such an air of authority that you would have sworn he had been side-by-side with Hendrix as Hendrix went through life setting his guitar on fire and doing lines of coke off of teenage girls buttocks. Unterberger wrote things like “…for all his shyness, Hendrix also had a burning, competitive ambition”. How the hell does Unterberger know this? Maybe if he would have given concrete examples of this, or maybe if he would have cited sources who were actually close to Hendrix or at least knew Hendrix, THEN that kind of statement might have had some authority to it. Instead Unterberger comes off as trying to pretend to have been a close confidant of Hendrix. And that really irked me. Why was Unterberger talking about Hendrix as though he is at a family gathering talking about a wild uncle who shows up late.
As I read on, I found an assortment of these kinds of assumptions/opinions. For instance later in the book Unterberger is talking about how Hendrix caused tension in the recording studio: “Hendrix always had a hard time saying no to or getting rid of people who wanted to get to know him better, get high with him or generally feed off his aura, whether due to his innate shyness or an inability to assert himself.” Then a few sentences later Unterbeger writes “…at times the Experience felt cluttered and hemmed in when too many of these musicians showed up, or their additions were superfluous or led to unproductive jams which were a distraction from the songs they were working on”. Again, how does Unterberger know any of this? He doesn’t include any quotes, he doesn’t give any detailed examples. He wasn’t there but he is making these assumptions—assumptions that are directly wired into the accepted, mainstream, iconic caricature of Hendrix. Unterberger is judging Hendrix’s methods based on the trappings of old school Rockism standards. And this was really what was starting to bother me about Unterberger.
Unterberger’s allegiance to old school Rocksim is revealed in this passage as well: “Unfortunately [emphesis added], the jam with which listeners are most likely to be familiar with is one in which a drunken Jim Morrison was inspired to slur along with Jimi, as the results found their way onto releases of dubious legality, the most notorious of which was titled Woke Up This Morning and Found Myself Dead”. Why is this unfortunate? Why is it BAD for a couple of guys to get together, get drunk, stoned and make some music? Why shouldn’t Rock fans listen to that? Documents like that are an important part of Rock history. Whether the creepy political correctness cops think such endevours should be censored from Rock history or not—it is jams like that which are a part of the reality of Rock, much more so than the public relations image that the record companies, corporate magazines and mainstream media have concocted and construed for marketing purposes. And that Unterberger bought into this entire bullshit and then regurgitated it back was making it very difficult for me to continue to read his words.
So I was about to scrap the book when I took one more look at his photo again, and this time I realized that Unterberger looked exactly like a middle-aged version of Bill Steele. Who the hell is Bill Steele, you ask? Bill Steele, who I dubbed Norml Bill was a toad I met while I was a DJ at the college radio station at Western Illinois University in the late 1980s. He came into the station one day to record a “public service announcement” about a rally on campus that was being sponsored by NORML (the National Organization for the Reformation of Marijuana Laws). Normal Bill was excessively sweaty and pimply-faced. His head was shaped like a huge lumpy potato, his ears were like two little lumpty potatoes and in fact his entire body was like one big lumpy potato. He talked non-stop in this high-pitched excitable voice, sorta like Gilbert Godfrey and he wore ginormous Harry Carey glasses that he was continually pushing up to keep them from falling off his nose. I think I was actually stoned when we first met and on first meeting I found his entire being to be comic genius. I was probably smiling the entire time he gave his spiell. Living vicarious through those who smoke weed. He himself was not “cool” so he would latch onto those who were—or who he perceived were cool. Unterberger seemed to be of this same ilk. He seemed to be trying to be cool vicariously through the Rock icons he worshipped.
The bad rap against Rockism has been that it is a stunted way of looking at music (life? the world? etc.) Unterberger is clearly a product of that outlook.
As I seriously considered dumping his book and going on to something else (Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee—my Bible of sorts—was sitting on the end table next to my bed, as always: I could always read that) I decided instead to actually read the “About the author” blurb next to his mugshot on the back cover. Unterberger had written another book that I had read a year earlier called Turn! Turn! Turn!/Eight Miles High. At the time I had actually enjoyed reading that, it was actually a lot like Unknown Legend of Rock n Roll in that was on a very fascinating subject to met—a two part history of 1960’s folk rock. In the end I decided that I would continue to read The Rough Guide, for I concluded that Unterberger doesn’t have the hipster-wannabee pretentiousness of a lot of Rockist writers. He’s more in the old school of Rockism that simply worships the Rock Gods and accepts the established old school Rockist perception of life, love and rock music. And he’s entitled to his opinion, afterall obviously he had read tons about Rock, and collected thousands of dollars worth of recorded music and he’s certainly set back and listened to the music and formed relationships with the music and the rock artists in that manner. And he obviously loves Rock.
For these reasons I give Unknown Legends 2.5 Wagemann Heads
NEXT!
January 31, 2008
Great info for anyone who wants to learn more about the music which has slipped through the cracks of time and transcontinental popularity. Artists are profiled individually each one bringing mystery and innovation which has fallen on many a deaf ear. Great book for beginner audiophiles.
January 31, 2021
I read this book about 20 years ago but it still to this day has a prominent spot on my bookshelf. I will be forever grateful to Richie Unterberger for opening my ears to so much interesting music. Looking back through the pages of this book now it seems that some of the artists in here are hardly unknown these days: Can, Young Marble Giants, The Raincoats, Love, Skip Spence, Lee Hazlewood, The Dils, Roky Erickson, X Ray Spex, etc. I imagine that has a lot to do with the passage of time and with so much of this music being more widely accessible via the internet, and more recently the resurgence of vinyl. Yes, 20 years have passed but I remember clearly devouring this book. It might be fun to read it again, after all, who were the Blue Things? Who were The Blossom Toes? Who is Ronnie Dawson? I feel my heart rate increasing.
Sadly the CD that came with this book is lost to the ages, the pocket at the back of the book that held the CD empty like a mouth without its tongue.
Sadly the CD that came with this book is lost to the ages, the pocket at the back of the book that held the CD empty like a mouth without its tongue.
December 4, 2020
Learned about some cool bands esp. Mystic Tide, Rising Sons. Some interesting anecdotes. Info is very dated. Pretty flat writing.
May 29, 2012
A book like this reveals how much the times have changed in the last 14 years. When Unknown Legends... appeared in 1998, Syd Barrett, Love, Roky Ericksson, Nick Drake were already gaining attention via CD reissues, but the remainder of the 60 profiled artists had not (as Untergerger’s listening recommendations reveal). Easier availability of their music & greater exposure in music journalism have graduated many more into the “mainstream” of cult status now, but Unknown Legends... got the ball rolling, and remains a delectable one-stop shop for basic history & first-hand anecdotes. Whether or not you’re already familiar with Davy Graham, The Creation, Robert Wyatt, or the others profiled in Unknown Legends..., it’s an insightful read.
March 29, 2011
It's best to approach this book as a starting point. It is a good list of names that you'll want to research and read about elsewhere. The bulk of the book reads like a high school essay and the pieces are surprisingly superficial. At one point, Unterberger mentions a band who he says were an obvious choice for this project but their history was too vast to be condensed into his book. Almost any band's history is too vast for this book. Unterberger manages to gloss over all the compelling backstory at his disposal in favor of selecting quotes about the artists' awesome chops. With no specifics to create a sense of character for the artists, the bios start feeling repetitive early on.
February 21, 2009
i was hoping to be wowed by this book and was a bit disappointed. that's not to say that it was bad, it was nice to read a music book that wasn't about top 40 groups. however, i personally felt like a lot of these unknown legends weren't *that* obscure. in fact, a lot of bands/artists i LOVE were featured. and maybe that just because i've worked at a record store for so long, but i would have enjoyed this book a lot more if they *really* covered random unknown artists.
December 7, 2013
overall very great book concerning the subject matter. good survey. dug the chapter on aisha kandisha's jarring effects. didn't really like the (brief) disparaging comment about Daniel Johnston. & honestly i'd love to read a book of this scope but with more of the "weirdosandeccentrics" like Daniel Johnston, Wesley Willis, Syd Barrett et cetera.
February 16, 2011
Comes with CD - for psych and garage music lovers mostly.
August 22, 2020
Extensive interviews from rockabilly unknowns, to Haight Ashbury legends, to Krautrock pioneers, to Crass and Roky Erickson,and Swamp Dogg. You won't find a more diverse book on the history of rock music. It also comes with an awesome CD. This book singlehandedly expanded my musical horizons in my adolesence.
September 17, 2021
Perfectly fine, but old hat for the true freaks. Reads like an AllMusic entry (which is where the author has done some time), but I'll be damned if I didn't find a few artists/bands that had managed to slip by me.
April 7, 2025
Sure it’s dated now and with the internet you can find all of this info and more about these and many other obscure artists, but this is still a good primer into lesser known bands and performers. You’ll probably search out many of them but ymmv.
June 14, 2025
excellent book on some amazing artists.
July 11, 2017
A worthy update
Even if you have the original hard copy, the new material is superbly integrated into the old. Many of the new artists added are revelations. I especially enjoyed the new quotes from former US of A members.
Even if you have the original hard copy, the new material is superbly integrated into the old. Many of the new artists added are revelations. I especially enjoyed the new quotes from former US of A members.
March 3, 2008
I felt he was "reaching" at times, but a decent read.
May 26, 2011
turned me onto one of my favorite bands- the mystic tide!
July 11, 2016
Encyclopedia about all the underground musicians in the rock world. It's ok but the free cd it comes with is pretty good!
April 12, 2013
So boring - sucked all the joy out of music. Actually took me several months (on and off) to get through this.
August 20, 2015
longtime favorite. i still reference all the time.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews